Routes, Planning, & Inspiration for Your North American Road Trip

The Phoenix One Journals Stories from the dawn of RoadTrip America

We've
never spent a Memorial Day Weekend quite like this one! Thanks to Ellen
Crawford of Redwood City, CA, we arrived in Humboldt County just in
time for the 27th annual World Championship Great Arcata to Ferndale
Cross-Country Kinetic Sculpture Race. You might think sculptures and
their creators would be satisfied with a little parade, nothing too
challenging. Wrong! The "greatest race on the planet" covered
fifty miles this year, and included sand dunes, two water crossings,
and mud traps, which all the contestants eagerly tackled "for the
glory!" There were prizes, too, including the "Mediocre Award,"
a 1960 Studebaker that went to the entrant closest to being completely
average.

After the
race, we ate at the Samoa Cookhouse, a lumberjack
eatery where Paul Bunyan might have felt at home. It's the oldest cookhouse
in the West, but it has the freshest homemade bread anywhere!

Hal Faulkner,
whom we met at the Kinetic Sculpture Race, is a sculptor and toy designer
in McKinleyville, north of Eureka. We visited him at his studio, and learned
how "action figures" come into being.

For the next
few days, we'll be enjoying the north coast, visiting the largest redwood
lumber mill in the world, the historic fishing village of Trinidad, and
more friends we met at the Race. We hope you'll join us as we mosey through
the redwoods toward Oregon!